Sign up for our daily briefing
Make your busy days simpler with Axios AM/PM. Catch up on what's new and why it matters in just 5 minutes.
Stay on top of the latest market trends
Subscribe to Axios Markets for the latest market trends and economic insights. Sign up for free.
Sports news worthy of your time
Binge on the stats and stories that drive the sports world with Axios Sports. Sign up for free.
Tech news worthy of your time
Get our smart take on technology from the Valley and D.C. with Axios Login. Sign up for free.
Get the inside stories
Get an insider's guide to the new White House with Axios Sneak Peek. Sign up for free.
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Want a daily digest of the top Denver news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Denver
Want a daily digest of the top Des Moines news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Des Moines
Want a daily digest of the top Twin Cities news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Twin Cities
Want a daily digest of the top Tampa Bay news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Tampa Bay
Want a daily digest of the top Charlotte news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Charlotte
Orban (L) and Merkel in Budapest. Photo: Carsten Koall/Getty Images
Germany’s domestic political limbo has subsided. Paris and Berlin are freshly committed to strengthening and revitalizing the European Union. And even the economic picture in Europe is rosier for the first time in years, according to the IMF. On the whole, you’d think things look pretty good for the continent.
But a deeper crisis is brewing. While the debt meltdowns that roiled the continent after 2008 revealed deep divisions between Europe’s wealthier North and poorer South, the European Union now faces a growing East-West split over political values as members from the former Eastern Bloc flout core EU principles of liberal democracy.
- In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban – thirty years ago a fearless dissident who railed against Soviet power – has been building an avowedly “illiberal state” that looks as much towards Moscow as it does towards Brussels.
- In Poland, a more acute crisis is afoot as the right-wing government’s efforts to politicize the judiciary have raised the prospect of an unprecedented but risky move by Brussels to suspend Warsaw’s voting rights within the EU. But Orban has pledged to veto any such measure on behalf of the Poles, making it unlikely that Brussels ultimately delivers on this threat.
Hungary and Poland say that Eurocrats are stepping on their hard-won sovereignty. But Brussels now faces a tough challenge. It must impose a cost on the Eastern Europeans for failing to live up to EU principles - cutting EU funding to them is one option – but without deepening East-West antagonism in a way that could imperil broader Franco-German efforts to unify and revitalize the EU as a whole.
And unlike the North-South divides which could ultimately be addressed with hard cash, disputes over values are much harder to resolve.
Sign up for Signal, a twice-weekly newsletter from GZERO Media, a Eurasia Group company, and follow @saosasha on Twitter.